Put Pressure On De Blasio To Keep His Campaign Promises On Education

Mr. de Blasio, who will be the
city’s first mayor in recent times with a child in the public school
system, said the decision was a particularly important one for his
family, and that, thanks to his experience, he and his wife have a “very
substantial personal network” of experts to consult.

“This is an area where I’ve been blessed to put part of my life in
this work. Chirlane put part of her life into this work. So we start
with a lot of personal perspective and very, very substantial network of
people that we know and respect in the field,” said Mr. de Blasio, who
previously served as a school board member back when school boards
existed and on the City Council’s education committee.

“Some of the leading candidates are people that I have worked with at
various points along the way,” he continued. “So it is a decision that
we’re doing very carefully. We’re talking to a lot of people we respect.
There are still nominations coming in.”

Barkan writes that de Blasio has to tread carefully on this because he is already taking criticism over his pick of Bratton to run the NYPD.

If de Blasio picks a chancellor who is perceived to be pro-charter or pro-reform, Barkan writes, de Blasio may be accused of "tacking to the center" and breaking his campaign promises now that he has gotten elected.

It behooves those of us interested in seeing a post-reform chancellor, somebody who will not emphasize testing, charter schools and many of the other tenets of the corporate ed deform movement, to let Bill de Blasio know in no uncertain terms that a pro-reform chancellor pick is a deal-breaker.

De Blasio must not be allowed to pull an Obama on us here and trot out someone like BBB or Kaya Henderson or someone under those two in name recognition who nonetheless will run the system in a reform-friendly way.